Love is all around me

When I was growing up, my favourite movie was Four Weddings and a Funeral. I thought it was hilarious and loved that the first word to be uttered in the film was a profanity. Followed by a liberal scattering of profanities throughout the film. I loved the music, I loved the actors and I loved the storyline. I did think it was strange though, that Hugh Grant says midway through the film that he is pleased to be spending his first Saturday in forever NOT going to a wedding. Having never been to a wedding myself I was awed at the number of weddings he must have been to. Where were all these people getting married? How do you even know enough people to be spending all this time at weddings? Seeing as the actors were much much older than me, I figured I would never have to worry about this (at least not for many many years). Until a few years ago.

It started with a close work colleague. Then a friend of my sister. Then a friend of my boyfriend. Then cousins, friends, acquaintances were all getting married! Makes me wonder what i’ve been doing with my time…

Clearly I haven’t spent my nights and days becoming a Piping Pro…

But I did think it was time to conquer my fear of covering a whole cake in fondant! Hooray!

And what better time to do it than to celebrate the engagement of my old high school friend Viv? As I missed the dinner where she made the engagement announcement, I thought a congratulatory cake would be in order. Turns out it’s not a scary or difficult as it seems (hmm am I about to use fondant as a metaphor for marriage? I hope not). As long as you leave yourself plenty of time and resign yourself to making quite a few mistakes, the road to a pretty fondant covered cake is relatively smooth sailing (well I didn’t say I wouldn’t mix my metaphors).

First you have to put on your funky apron

Yes, I bake in my pjamas…

Then you must bake a cake. Any kind of cake really. It should be relatively sturdy though so probably not a sponge. I baked a vanilla cake from this Magnolia Bakery recipe and I only baked a tiny one because if it was a screw up, at least it wouldn’t be a huge screw up!

A layer of buttercream goes between the cake and the fondant (you can use ganache if you like). I used the Magnolia Bakery buttercream recipe but I substituted the vanilla essence for musk flavouring. Far out… musk buttercream is one tasty icing!

After colouring and kneading your fondant, roll it out and drape it over your cake making sure you smooth it over the top and down the sides. Press firmly to make sure the fondant sticks

Trim off the excess (more neatly than I did!)

And decorate however you like. I attached a strip of white fondant around the base of the cake then folded two loops and joined them in the middle with a third piece of fondant to make a bow.

Now, I wish I had stopped there. But no, I was on a roll and figured I would try my hand at a little piped message on top of the cake. However, with my short memory I forgot how bad I am at piping. So the end result looked a little something like this…

I now realise that tiny cake + large piping tip x enormous word = disaster

While it was not bad for a first attempt, I will endeavour to do better! And it did celebrate the occasion nicely.

So a huge congratulations to my beautiful friends Viv and Louis, I promise to make you a prettier cake in the future!!